Open Source JavaScript PDF Editor Library
Free & Open Source JavaScript library to generate PDF documents.
What is PDFKit?
PDFKit is a free and open-source JavaScript library for creating and editing PDF files. It lets you create PDFs from scratch, add text, images & shapes to PDFs and create PDF forms etc. This tool is handy for creating all sorts of PDF documents like invoices or reports.
Following are some of the main features of PDFKit:
- Creating PDFs and Adding Text: PDFKit allows you to generate new PDF documents from scratch and add text to them.
- Adding Images: It also enables you to insert images into your PDF documents.
- Creating Shapes: PDFKit provides tools to create various shapes like rectangles, circles, and lines within your PDF documents. You can control their size, position and appearance.
- Creating Forms: PDFKit supports the creation of PDF forms, which can include text fields, checkboxes, and radio buttons. This is essential for generating forms that users can fill out electronically.
Getting Started with PDFKit
You can install PDFKit library using the npm package manager. Just type the following command after installing npm.
Install using NPM
npm install pdfkit
Creating PDF Document
We can easily create a PDF document and add text to it using the PDFKit library. We can also set custom fonts and font sizes using PDFKit. For example, check below code snippet:
Output
The following output displays the generated PDF document:
Adding Images to PDF
We can create a PDF and add images to the PDF using the PDFKit library. We can also align the image both: vertically and horizontally using the align and valign arguments as shown in below code snippet:
Output
Below screenshot displays the PDF document with the image added to it:
Adding Shapes to PDF
We can also create a PDF and add shapes such as triangles and circles to it using the PDFKit library. We will use functions such as circle and lineto to draw the shapes as demonstrated in below code snippet:
Output
The following screenshot shows the PDF document with the shapes drawn using the above code snippet:
Creating Forms in PDF
PDFKit library also allows to create forms in the PDF document. The library does not have a built-in feature to create forms but we can use its text and shapes related functions to create a PDF form as shown in the below code snippet:
Output
The following screenshot shows the form created in the PDF document:
Conclusion
In conclusion, PDFKit is an easy-to-use and free JavaScript library for PDF generation. It offers an accessible and user-friendly way to create PDF documents, making it an ideal choice for tasks involving form creation, text and image placement, and shape design.
While PDFKit excels in many areas, it's worth noting that certain functions, such as aligning images to the center of a page, may require additional customization and care to achieve desired results. Other than that it is a reliable tool for many PDF-related tasks.
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